Kurt Jackson
i art music activism Kurt Jackson, Glastonbury & Greenpeace © Greenpeace / Miguel Angel Gremo
An integral part of this exhibition , shown alongside Kurt Jackson’s Glastonbury paintings, is Greenpeace: 50 Years of Making Waves, a photo history of this pioneering environmental charity from inception to present day. 50 Years of Making Waves can be viewed from March to August at the Jackson Foundation, Cornwall.
for Caroline KURT JACKSON Editions 2 Glastonbury Festival
I think I was aware of Glastonbury Festival almost from the inception, I remember the idea of trekking off there being up for discussion when I was at school, some mates went, most didn’t.
During sixth form and then at university I site, chose a spot in the middle of the festi bours that we had gone to Glastonbury went to numerous other festivals – the so val to park and then all camped around and they found me straight away, on the called ‘free festivals’, hitching up and down the van. It was that easy. I can’t remember other side of the barbed wire fence push the country to gatherings in fields and on much about it now but that was my first ing Seth in his buggy through the early waste grounds, often set up by travellers introduction to Glastonbury Festival, the morning festival, simple! or the peace movement, they would some tent city, the fields – each with a different Then I was invited to exhibit at the festi times involve a protest outside a military flavour and focus, the mix. val. Pendragon Arts was a new collective or nuclear base, sometimes just for music After all those free festivals it was some of West Country artists that were given a and partying. Stonehenge Festival and the thing of a relief to find real organisation at marquee near the Wise Crone Café with Green Gatherings were extraordinary – Glastonbury, but the diverse mix of people, camping space in the Tipi Field and free multitudes of colourful tipis, yurts and all ages and backgrounds, all strata of the tickets to the festival. We had at last land converted buses; the hippies and punks, population together, was still present with ed on our feet. In the 90s I showed my the theatre, music and debates, the dogs that emphasis on alternative approaches watercolours and oils of Cornwall in the and horses. I was introduced to a whole to living still up for discussion and discov marquee, very rarely selling anything, host of new ideas, ways of living, politics, ery. The next few summers Caroline and I but the access, the ‘formal invite’ was gold and yes, I tried to draw and paint what I continued to make the trip up to the festi dust and I started using my position to saw and found. val once the children were born and we had paint the festival itself. I painted my first I eventually got to Glastonbury for our own vehicle. Parking an old banger in bands in the Wise Crone and on the the first time in 1985, we were living in a field, putting our tent up next to it and Avalon Stage. Boscastle with a good social life, a big pushing the kids around in a buggy, crowd of friends, isolated and in rural became normal. Some years the car broke bliss, and Caroline was expecting our first down or become stuck in the mud but that child. Someone rented a box van and a was part of it. It was so much smaller in Samba from the West Holts and then Dengue dozen of us climbed aboard with our tents, those days. Two mates came to visit us at Fever, threatening to rain, Glastonbury. 2011 food and £15 tickets. We drove onto the home in Cornwall were told by the neigh mixed media and mud on paper 57 × 61 cm 4 5
Radiohead from the press pit, Glastonbury. Michael Kiwanuka, Glastonbury. 2019 2017 mixed media on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm pencil on paper 29.5 × 20 cm
rock star. I found myself facing crowds of Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, the thousands. I met performers, was actually festival charities. painting in front of performers, revellers This year Greenpeace celebrates their and the security. I discovered more material half centenary of campaigning for a to paint and draw than I could ever hope healthier, more viable and equable planet to cope with. I was mind blown. and environment, so we have chosen to From trying to paint the bands as distant use this occasion to join in with that dots on a distant stage I could now work on celebration. Through the festival we the stage itself, but I still wanted to work have become close to Greenpeace, not within the crowd. Then there was also the just in supporting their good works by choice of stages with different genres of helping raise funds and awareness for music, different aspects, different crowds. them, but also with the direct contact Annually I would try and find novel ways and the friendships we have made. To us of working, new panoramas of the site and their involvement has been important festival, varying the media, using mud or and profound. found collage, changing the scale. Contin ually I searched for vantage points to look Now also in its 50th year the festival out over the audience and across the val continues to grow and flourish, to alter ley. Then the year came when Michael each year with new fields, new layouts and offered to build me my own platform, a larger crowds, but somehow it maintains scaffold tower where I could lay out my that unique gritty, colourful, wacky blend huge canvases to work undisturbed above of revelry, celebration, political debate and the punters, on my own stage, 40 foot up discourse and performance; a British eccen in the sky, roofed and accessible by only a tricity with an international multicultural In 1997 I realised that Michael and Jean it, he liked the idea, and after further dis ladder. I used that location to make two dynamism. It’s the festival where every sort Eavis had a connection with St Just where cussion we fine-tuned how it would work. . massive canvases and a series of smaller of music, theatre, film, poetry, stand-up, we live. I met Michael picking up his grand That first year as the Glastonbury Festival works on paper. It was the ultimate situation lectures, crafts, arts, innovation, tradition, children outside the local school which Artist in Residence or the ‘Festival Artist’ as artist in residence at the ultimate festival, technology, fashion, and even food and my kids also attended and I approached as I became known, was incredibly exciting. the largest festival of performing arts in drink, are on display in a frenzy of cutting him with my idea. In return for being given Full of trepidation and a little nervous, I the world. edge fusion, but crucially out in the open tickets and access all over the site I would was thrown into the deep end. That year I And every few years the paintings and air, out in the Somerset countryside. make a series of paintings that could raise was on stage painting REM and Courtney drawings have been used to raise funds funds for the festival charities. He went for Love. I was introduced to the world of the and awareness for the valuable work of In search of a Basket
We walked hand in hand Four legged This temporary city Mutually supporting This huge pudding Briskly Through the interstage A welly clad quadruped And into the streets Ankle deep Through the markets In pungent mud. Under Somerset skies Rainladen clouds Somerset soil cakey and soupey Blue heavens Over blues lias shingles Between tall hedgerows With wood chip sprinkles And flowery elder. And a dash of litter Plates and cups Competing with and jostled in the crowds Soggy propaganda Squeezed, bounced, barged, colliding Of anti-frack and free Tibet With the hoards All mixed and churned Of eager happy holidaying By a few hundred thousand Swaying, drinking, eating Pairs of feet Singing and dancing Walking, dawdling, dancing Sober and drunk Muddy and pristine Punters, traders and performers In fancy dress And best bib and tucker The dreads and tie dies Hipsters and teenagers Mums and dads Kids and grandparents Buggy-pushing Mate-dragging One big moving muddy mosh pit Of fun To the Tor between the Dance and John Peel, Glastonbury. 2016 continued on page 8 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm
6 7 In our quest, our search Aiming for the crafty lot In the Green Fields Amongst the bodgers and weavers Spoon makers, iron forgers and stone carvers Between the tipis, yurts and benders.
Where a little grass remains Acoustic and resting Here we find our group Away from the heavy bass Of young mums And dubstep Sitting beneath a tarpaulin A drifting fiddle Surrounded by a scattering Some wood smoke Of their willow wares Warming the chai Earnestly discussing Under flags and bunting The ups and downs And solar or wind turbine The ins and outs Slow gently lingering vibes Of this mad world And fluttering grooves. While weaving and crafting Withies and sticks Bark dyed and natural Cross-legged and crouching On a Somerset field On a square of England With our basket.
Funkadelic, flags in a night sky. West Holts, Glastonbury. 2015 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm
8 9 Figures in evening mud, Glastonbury. 2011 Drifting tunes in the sun, Glastonbury. 2014 mixed media and mud on paper 57 × 62 cm mixed media on paper 57 × 59 cm
10 11 Heading for dusk, Adele on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2016 Friday lunchtime, music from everywhere, Glastonbury. 2013 mixed media on paper 57 × 60 cm mixed media on paper 57 × 61 cm
12 13 On top of a fire tower, Glastonbury. 2016 Muse on the Pyramid, dusk, Glastonbury. 2016 mixed media on wood panel 60 60 cm mixed media on museum board 32 × 32 cm ×
14 15 Scorcher, Femi Kuti on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2010 mixed media on linen 200 × 320 cm.
16 17 Glastonbury tents, Thursday rain. 2014 Pyramid, lightning and downpours, Glastonbury. 2014. mixed media on museum board 50 × 60 cm mixed media on museum board 31 × 39 cm
18 19 Leftfield, Billy Bragg. 2013 Some wonderful unknown band on the bandstand in the hot sun. 2015 mixed media on museum board 25 × 27 cm mixed media on museum board 21 × 22 cm
20 21 Rodrigo y Gabriela on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2014 Saturday evening. The Rolling Stones are out there doing their thing. 2013 mixed media on museum board 21 × 18 cm mixed media on museum board 21 × 22 cm
22 23 The sun comes out and everyone starts dancing. West Holts Stage field, Glastonbury. 2011 Trying to carry your drinks in the mud. 2011 mixed media and collage 31 × 29 cm pencil glue and mud on paper 31 × 29 cm
24 25 Glastonbury acrobats. 2011 David Attenborough talks on the Pyramid Stage. 2019 mixed media on paper 30.5 × 11.5 cm pencil and pastel on paper 30 × 21 cm
26 27 “I climb up onto the main stage at Glastonbury – the Pyramid how my presence will be received. Will I be totally ignored, Stage – or rather I stride up a series of ramped boards to the rear glared at, dragged out to be shown to the crowd or nearly of the massive structure. First, I have to face the security – ranks trampled, barged or threatened. It has all happened. When nerves, of Glaswegian security, almost invariably grumpy and serious; egos, inebriation and celebrity get involved, my painting can get doubtful about my intentions and right to access to this most in the way; normally, however, I just do my thing and it’s all fine. precious of precious areas, a church or cathedral to entertain I try to capture the atmosphere of the act – the feeling – the ment, a sacred place. Once through I have to negotiate the tiers light show, the smoke, that wall of sound, the movement and of drum kits, trolleys loaded with guitars and other instruments, form of the band; yes, there is a degree of likeness to the ‘stars’, keyboards and wheeled boxes – all being shoved and pushed but I try not to get too wrapped up in that. I work very fast – around by the big hairy, tattooed roadies. Even though I am washes of colour, pools of inks, stabs of crayon; it dries quickly separated from the stage itself, I can hear the crowd out there under the hot lights. If it’s a night gig I have to remember where murmuring with expectation and excitement. I push through the colours are in my palette and boxes – the near darkness and the black curtain, the backcloths onto the open stage, and head then the spotlights turn one colour into another – impossible for my normal spot – stage left – to one side, next to the DJ, hope to even guess what’s on my page or brush. The pages fill, and fully out of the view of the audience and not so near the I bulldog-clip them over so they’re not quite touching and performers that I would intrude. carry on with a fresh page. I write down lyrics and song titles, Under that immense dome of a sky is a sea of faces – a vast my thoughts and feelings. The crowd sings along, chanting, moving crowd of colour and noise, with the banners and flags screaming, and swaying out front and below, even crowd above, as far as the fields of tents in the distance – usually tens surfing. Objects get thrown onto the stage, bouncing around of thousands of people. me – bottles, balls and pieces of clothing. The performers It is quite staggering – just so much humanity all staring in sometimes come dangerously close – wildly dancing and this one direction. I squat down on the stage, leaning against the leaping around – a near stab of a Lily Allen stiletto or a speaker boxes; I have my compulsory earplugs rammed in – sweeping guitar at head height from Oasis.” they don’t shut all the sound out by any means, but it is bearable – pleasurable – not dangerous. I sit on a pile of electric cables and Kurt Jackson Sketchbooks Lund Humphries 2012 lay my gear out around me – water pot and brushes, old lunch boxes of inks, pastels, crayons, my palette of watercolours. With a roar and a change in lighting the performance starts – the band arrives on-stage – a moment of extreme excitement flickers Oasis. Champagne Supernova, through the air and trepidation in my case. I never know quite Glastonbury. 2004 mixed media on paper 38.5 × 27.5 cm
28 29 Manu Chao, Glastonbury. 2007 In the heart of Glastonbury, mud at sunset. 2020 mixed media on paper 42 × 29.5 cm mixed media on canvas. 122 × 122cm
30 31 Amadou and Mariam, Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2009 Lee “Scratch” Perry on the Glade, Glastonbury. 2011 mixed media on paper. 24 × 24cm pencil on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm
32 33 Damian Marley, Glastonbury. 2007 Foo Fighters, Glastonbury. 2017 mixed media and collage on paper 25 × 24.5 cm pencil, collage and ink on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm
34 35 Alabama Shakes, Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2015 Too hot. Glasto tent city. 2010 mixed media on museum board 20 × 22 cm mixed media on linen 200 × 236 cm
36 37 Toumani and Sidiki Diabati, 70 generations later. 2014 Dusk, flags, lights and smoke. 2019 mixed media on museum board 24 × 25 cm oil and mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm
38 39 Saturday, dancing in big hats, Other Stage. 2020 Lizzo, cuz I love you, Glastonbury. 2019 mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm pencil and crayon on paper 29.5 × 20 cm
40 41 Glastonbury by night. 2019 mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm
43 Pyramid madness 11pm. 2019 Amy Winehouse, Glastonbury. 2007 oil and mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm pencil and collage on paper 42 × 29.5 cm
45 46 47 Kurt Jackson
A dedicated environmentalist and true polymath, Jackson’s holistic approach to his subject seamlessly blends art and politics providing a springboard to create a hugely varied body of work unconstrained by format or scale.
Jackson’s artistic practice ranges from Project and, for nearly 20 years, at the He has an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) his trademark visceral plein-air sessions Glastonbury Festival, which has become from Exeter University and is an Honorary to studio work and embraces an extensive a staple of his annual working calendar. Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford Uni range of materials and techniques Over the past thirty years Jackson has versity. He is an ambassador for Survival including mixed media, large canvases, had numerous art publications released International and frequently works with print-making and sculpture. to accompany his exhibitions. Four mono Greenpeace, WaterAid, Oxfam and Jackson was born in Blandford, Dorset graphs on Jackson have been published by Cornwall Wildlife Trust. He is a patron in 1961, the son of artists. While studying Lund Humphries depicting his career so of human rights charity Prisoners of Zoology at Oxford University he spent far; A New Genre of Landscape Painting (2010), Conscience. He is represented by Messum’s most of his time painting and attending Sketchbooks (2012), A Kurt Jackson Bestiary in Cork Street, London and is an academi courses at Ruskin College of Art. On gain (2015) and Kurt Jackson’s Botanical Landscape cian at the Royal West of England Academy. ing his degree he travelled extensively (2019). A book published by Sansom & Kurt Jackson and his wife Caroline live and independently, painting wherever Company, based on his touring exhibition and work in the most-westerly town in he went before putting down roots in ‘Place’, was released in 2014. Britain, St Just-in-Penwith where in 2015 Cornwall with his wife Caroline in 1984. Jackson regularly contributes to radio they set up the Jackson Foundation. They Jackson’s focus on the complexity, and television, presents environmentally have three grown children and seven diversity and fragility of the natural world informed art documentaries for the BBC young grandchildren. has led to artist-in-residencies on the and was the subject for an award winning Greenpeace ship Esperanza, the Eden BBC documentary, ‘A Picture of Britain’. Kurt Jackson art music activism price list
page title / media dimensions price page title / media dimensions price
f cover Fisherman’s Friends on stage, Glastonbury. 2011 18 Glastonbury tents, Thursday rain. 2014 mixed media on paper 57 × 60 cm £8,250 mixed media on museum board 50 × 60 cm £7,500 page 3 Samba from the West Holts etc, Glastonbury. 2011 19 Pyramid, lightening and downpours, Glastonbury. 2014 mixed media and mud on paper 57 × 61 cm £8,250 mixed media on museum board 31 × 39 cm £5,000 4 Radiohead from the press pit, Glastonbury. 2017 20 Leftfield, Billy Bragg. 2013 mixed media on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm £4,000 mixed media on museum board 25 × 27 cm £4,000 5 Michael Kiwanuka, Glastonbury. 2019 21 Some wonderful unknown band on the bandstand etc. 2015 pencil on paper 29.5 × 20 cm £2,000 mixed media on museum board 21 × 22 cm £3,500 7 To the Tor between the Dance and John Peel, Glastonbury. 2016 22 Rodrigo y Gabriela on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2014 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm £8,250 Night Rainbow Warrior 3, mixed media on museum board 21 × 18 cm £3,000 Tower Bridge, London. 2011 9 Funkadelic, flags in a night sky, West Holts, Glastonbury. 2015 23 Saturday evening. The Rolling Stones are out there etc. 2013 mixed media on paper 19 × 28 cm mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm £8,250 mixed media on museum board 21 × 22 cm £3,500 10 Figures in evening mud, Glastonbury. 2011 24 The sun comes out and everyone starts etc. Glastonbury 2011 mixed media and mud on paper 57 × 62 cm £8,250 mixed media and collage 31 × 29 cm £4,000 11 Drifting tunes in the sun, Glastonbury. 2014 25 Trying to carry your drinks in the mud. 2011 mixed media on paper 57 × 59 cm £8,250 2020: starting a decade of change to protect the climate and nature pencil glue and mud on paper 31 × 29 cm £3,000 12 Heading for dusk, Adele on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2016 26 Glastonbury acrobats [blue]. 2011 In the last 12 months, climate change and the destruction of nature have mixed media on paper 57 × 60 cm £8,250 mixed media on paper 30.5 × 11.5 cm £3,000 13 Friday lunchtime, music from everywhere, Glastonbury. 2013 become impossible to ignore. Millions of people took to the streets as 27 David Attenborough talks on the Pyramid stage. 2019 mixed media on paper 57 × 61 cm £8,250 pencil and pastel on paper 30 × 21 cm NFS wildfires raged and heatwaves threatened lives – hitting many of the 14 On top of a fire tower, Glastonbury. 2016 29 Oasis, Champagne Supernova, Glastonbury. 2004 mixed media on museum board 32 × 32 cm £5,000 communities least responsible hardest. 2020 will kick-start a decade of mixed media on paper 38.5 × 27.5 cm £5,000 15 Muse on the Pyramid, dusk, Glastonbury. 2016 30 Manu Chao, Glastonbury. 2007 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm £8,250 change so forests, oceans and the climate can be restored and renewed. mixed media on paper00 42 × 29.5 cm £5,000 16 Scorcher, Femi Kuti on the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2010 Greenpeace will be there calling out truth to power as it records 50 years 31 In the heart of Glastonbury, mud at sunset. 2020 mixed media on linen 200 × 320 cm POA mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm POA of protecting the planet. Kurt Jackson art music activism price list (continued)
page title / media dimensions price page title / media dimensions price
32 Amadou and Mariam. 2009 39 Dusk, flags, lights and smoke. 2019 mixed media on paper 24 × 24 cm £2,500 oil and mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm POA
33 Lee Scratch Perry on the Glade, Glastonbury. 2011 40 11pm Saturday, dancing in big hats, Other Stage. 2020 pencil on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm £2,750 mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm POA
34 Damian Marley, Glastonbury. 2007 41 Lizzo, cuz I love you, Glastonbury. 2019 mixed media and collage on paper 25 × 24.5 cm £3,500 encil and crayon on paper 29.5 × 29 cm £2,500
35 Foo Fighters, Glastonbury. 2017 42 Glastonbury by night. 2019 pencil, collage and ink on paper 30.5 × 29.5 cm £4,000 mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm POA
36 Alabama Shakes, Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury. 2015 44 Pyramid madness 11pm. 2019 mixed media on museum board 20 × 22 cm £3,500 oil and mixed media on canvas 122 × 122 cm POA
37 Too hot Glasto tent city. 2010 45 Amy Winehouse, Glastonbury. 2007 mixed media on linen 200 × 236 cm POA pencil and collage on paper 42 × 29.5 cm £4,000
38 Toumani and Sidiki Diabati, 70 generations later. 2014 48 Night Rainbow Warrior 3, Tower Bridge, London. 2011 mixed media on museum board 24 × 25 cm £3,500 mixed media on paper 19 × 28 cm £4,000
First published in 2020 Published by Kurt Jackson Editions in 2020 Greenpeace is comprised of 27 independent www.kurtjackson.com national/regional organisations in over 55 isbn 978-1-9995829-6-8 countries across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, as well as a co-ordinating Publication copyright Kurt and Caroline Jackson Ltd body, Greenpeace International, based in All images, words and poetry copyright Kurt Jackson 2020 Amsterdam Portrait photograph by Caroline Jackson Art Photography by Fynn Tucker and PH Media Design by Lyn Davies Design
Printed by Park Lane Press, Corsham, on fsc® certified paper, using fully sustainable, vegetable oil-based inks, front cover power from 100% renewable resources and waterless Fisherman’s Friends on stage, Glastonbury. 2011 printing technology. Print production systems registered mixed media on paper 57 × 60 cm to iso 14001, iso 9001 and over 98% of waste is recycled It must have been about 30 years ago that my daughter Juliet introduced me to a young painter who she said was very keen to meet myself & Jean and talk about his work.
He showed us some of the paintings that he had done and we were both well impressed. The end result of that meeting was that Kurt was invited to be our artist in residence — and has been ever since.
Over these years, his wonderful paintings and sketches have been sold at Greenpeace fundraising auctions and made masses of money for them and other good causes.
Years later, and West Cornwall has the Jackson Foundation, a beautifully built gallery in a lovely place, which is set to exhibit some of Kurt’s best Festival paintings. I can’t wait to be in St Just for this very special occasion. Michael Eavis, Glastonbury Festival Organiser
Kurt has painted and sketched over 20 years’ worth of Festival moments at Glastonbury and we love the way he captures the festival landscape so beautifully. I’m really looking forward to seeing this collection all in one place. Emily Eavis, Glastonbury Festival Organiser
KURT JACKSON Editions 2020